Willem Dafoe is no stranger to the superhero genre. He remains my favorite live-action comic villain for his performance playing Norma Osborn / Green Goblin in 2002’s Spider-Man. Next, Dafoe will be playing Nuidis Vulko in both Justice League and Aquaman, though the actor admits the size of his role in Justice League is basically a cameo. In the comics, Vulko is a scientific adviser to Atlantis. But, as is common in comic book movies, don’t expect the Vulko you know and love from the comics to remain the same on the big screen; there have been adjustments.

At a press junket for Death Note, in which Dafoe plays death god Ryuk, Screen Crush caught up with Dafoe and asked him about his character and shooting Aquaman. Dafoe went onto explain that Vulko won’t completely resemble his comic book iteration:

“There’s been some adjustments. Not even adjustments – it’s like anything, you use the source material and something is born from that. But I don’t really look like he does in the comic, and his role is slightly different. He is an adviser, but he’s also sort of a mentor to Aquaman.”

Vulko doesn’t always see eye-to-eye with Aquaman in the comics, even once opposing Aquaman’s rule. Dafoe was asked if his version of Vulko is considered a good guy. His response:

“I’d say so. If you want to get down to those kind of categorizations. I don’t need to, I know why people do it because we’ve got to describe things sometimes. Everybody’s a mix, [laughs] good and bad.”

Dafoe went on to discuss how most of his scenes in the film take place underwater and explained the process and challanges of shooting such scenes:

“Most of my scenes are underwater. Some are not. So much of it, because we’re talking, and shooting underwater is a lot of ways impractical because you’re limited to what you can do with sets. It’s more about shooting them dry for wet, and then the effects do certain things to give the water feel. But we aren’t doing the scenes underwater, but we are in harnesses and on wires. There is movement. It’s not like were all sitting around pretending were underwater like this [stands up still], we’re swimming around, we’re moving. So that should be really beautiful.”

We have seen little footage of underwater action in the trailers for Justice League, so it’s still up in the air about how effective they will be, or how realistic they may seem. I can’t picture what they must be like with dialogue underwater, so I look forward to the first footage of such a scene.

What do you think about what Dafoe has to say about adjustments to Vulko and how they are shooting underwater dialogue scenes? Can you wrap your head around what that will look like in live-action? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below!

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SOURCE: Screen Crush